"Traces
the oldest
prejudice
in the world, the hatred of the Jews, and how it
rears its ugly head in
contemporary times."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Jewish-American filmmaker Marc Levin ("Slam") traces
the
oldest prejudice
in the world, the hatred of the Jews, and how it rears
its ugly head in
contemporary times. He starts after 9/11 and picks up
on the
unbelievable
statements made by the lunatic fringe, buttressed by a
Turkish
newspaper,
that no Jews died in the World Trade Center because
four thousand of
them
were warned to stay away on that fatal day. From there
the filmmaker
latches
onto the notorious anti-Semitic book, Protocols of the
Elders of Zion,
that claims to have minutes of a secret meeting of
Jews to gain control
of the world. In the 1920s it was exposed as a forged
document from the
late-19th century invented by Czar Nicholas II's
secret police and
released
to the world around 1905. Such prominent people in the
modern world as
Henry Ford made it public by distributing copies free
of charge to car
buyers, Adolf Hitler used it in his hate speeches, in
recent times
former
Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad referred to
it when stating
"Jews
rule the world by proxy," it was made into a movie for
Egyptian TV,
Hamas
has it as part of its founding charter, white
supremacists sell it as
part
of their staple of hate literature, and militant
blacks use it to stir
up their followers with hatred for the Jews.

In order to find out why there are those in the
world still
blaming
the Jews for everything that goes wrong, the filmmaker
personalizes the
story and meets the ignorant people who are so blinded
with hatred that
they believe such nonsense as The Protocols and all
other lies that
link
the Jews with an international cabal. This brings him
into contact with
such ugly characters as street corner instigators, an
Arab newspaper
editor
in New Jersey who printed The Protocols, neo-Nazi
organizers, and
hostile
talk-radio callers on extremist Frank Weltner's radio
show (this weirdo
also runs a Web site called "Jew Watch"). Finally
giving up trying to
convince
such hateful people of their Jewish misconceptions, he
shows off a
Holocaust
survivor speaking to a group (but it's doubtful if
even his presence
would
have convinced Holocaust deniers such as Mel Gibson's
dad that he was
wrong--the
film also shows his son Mel defending his The Passion
of the Christ
film
as a return to the church's old teachings of blaming
the Jews as the
Christ
killer). For further proof the earnest filmmaker then
points his camera
at the Jewish graves of the many who were killed at
the WTC, exposes
the
falsehood that the Jews control the media as evidenced
by media mogul
Rupert
Murdoch (whom the bigots say must be Jewish because
he's a media mogul)
and ridicules the ignorant street notion that the "Jew
York" mayor
during
9/11 was none other than "Jewliani." What can you say
to such attempts
to scapegoat a people for every wrong in society?

Even though the film deals with the low-end bigots
(talking
only
with the misinformed, the crazies, the uneducated and
the holders of
outrageous
beliefs) and doesn't say anything we didn't already
know, it's still
worthwhile
looking up close at those who spread these vile lies
and make their
hatred
contagious and potentially lethal. Its main problem is
that it lacks
focus
and tries to branch out too far afield to give its
subject matter the
more
incisive depth it deserves. It veers too much between
tracing post-9/11
and historical anti-Semitism, never satisfactorily
finishing the task
it
originally intended to zero in on.